Thursday, November 03, 2016

Hillary Clinton Still Leads a Tighter Race, Times/CBS News Poll Shows

Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas on Wednesday.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

Heading into the final days of the presidential campaign, the race has settled back into a tight contest, with Hillary Clinton holding an edge over Donald J. Trump
after a month of tumult. Most voters say their minds are made up and
late revelations about both candidates made no significant difference to
them, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll released
Thursday.

Five
days before Election Day, the margin between the candidates is narrow,
with 45 percent of likely voters supporting Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic
candidate, to 42 percent for Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee. The
difference is within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Gary Johnson,
the Libertarian candidate, has the support of 5 percent of likely
voters, and the Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, takes 4 percent.

More than 22 million Americans have already cast their ballots, and roughly one in five likely voters who participated in the Times/CBS poll said they had already voted.

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National
polling averages showed a growing lead for Mrs. Clinton in mid-October
after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording from 2005 in which
Mr. Trump speaks crudely about women. As women from Mr. Trump’s past
came out over the next weeks to report that he had sexually harassed
them, his poll numbers dipped.

Yet
after a rough few weeks, enthusiasm among Mr. Trump’s supporters has
rebounded, and 52 percent now say they are very enthusiastic about
voting. Enthusiasm among Mrs. Clinton’s supporters has remained flat
since September, with 47 percent saying they are very enthusiastic to
vote.

Mrs.
Clinton holds a 14-point advantage over her opponent among women while
Mr. Trump leads among men by 11 points. White women, who have supported
Republican candidates in the last three presidential elections, are
evenly split in the current poll.

Last
Friday, when the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, sent a letter
to Congress about a new inquiry into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, Mr. Trump
seized on the opportunity to shift the tenor of the campaign and focus
on the controversy surrounding her handling of emails when she was
secretary of state.

The
Times/CBS poll began hours after Mr. Comey’s letter became public, and
most voters contacted said they had heard about the development. Even
more voters said they were aware of charges that Mr. Trump had made
unwanted sexual advances toward a number of women.

Yet,
about six in 10 voters over all said that the 11th-hour disclosures
about each candidate would make no real difference in their vote, but
they were more likely to be negatively affected by the revelations about
Mr. Trump than by those about Mrs. Clinton. Four in 10 likely voters
said Mr. Trump’s behavior toward women made them less likely to support
him while fewer, one-third, said the newest development in the F.B.I.
investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails had that effect.

Mrs.
Clinton’s support among African-Americans, women, whites holding a
college degree and younger voters remains strong. Mr. Trump is holding
onto his core supporters as well, with more whites, men, whites without a
college degree, white evangelicals, white Roman Catholics and older
voters backing him.

Fewer
than one in 10 likely voters say they may still change their minds
about whom they will support on Tuesday, and both candidates have about
equal support among their party’s voters. Political independents, who
backed President Obama in 2008 and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee,
in 2012, are currently split.

At
this point in the 2012 campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney were
deadlocked in polling averages, and Mr. Obama went on to win the
election by a four-point margin.

More results of the Times/CBS poll will be released at 6:30 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.

The
nationwide telephone poll was conducted with 1,333 registered voters
from Oct. 28 to Nov. 1 on cellphones and landlines. The margin of
sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for all voters.